Bowling for Columbine Page #12

We're not doing anything

by taking the one parent, putting them on a bus,

sending them out of town

to make $5.50 an hour.

This is the bus

that she was forced to ride every day

in order to work off the welfare money

the state had given her.

She and many others from Flint who were poor

would make the 80-mile round trip every day

from Flint to Auburn Hills in Oakland County,

one of the wealthiest areas in the country.

Tamarla would leave early in the morning

and return late at night,

rarely seeing her young children.

What's the point?

What's the point in doing that?

Where does the state benefit?

Where does Flint and Genesee County

benefit from that?

We have a child dead.

I think that may be, in pan, pan of the problem.

We drove the one parent out.

Now, you, or anybody else, that can tell me

that that best serves a community...

...I shake my head and wonder why.

- How long have you been riding the bus?

- I've been working here...

- just about three years now.

- About three years?

My brother... I've got my brother working here.

Half of my neighborhood works out here.

Just about everybody I know personally

works out here in the mall.

In Flint, doing the same thing I'm doing now,

they only pay minimum wage.

I come 40 miles to make um...

three or four dollars more an hour.

How much do you make an hour here?

- I make $8.50 an hour.

- $8.50?

- Is that enough to pay the bills?

- No.

So did you know Tamarla Owens,

the woman whose son shot the little girl?

- I think she rode this bus.

- I knew her a little.

- Not... not real good.

- Nice lady?

Yeah, she was OK.

She came to work every day, did her job.

She worked two jobs, so...

Worked two jobs?

She was trying to make ends meet.

We're going hoppin', we're going hoppin'

today where things are poppin'

This is Dick Clark's American Bandstand Grill,

where Tamarla worked one of her two jobs.

Bandstand

She worked in this room here as a bartender...

...a fountain person making drinks,

making shakes, desserts.

- Was she a good employee?

- Yeah, she was.

- She also worked at the Fudgery in the mall.

- Where the state had placed her.

Dick Clark is an American icon,

the man who brought rock'n'roll into our homes

every week on American Bandstand.

Every pan of your life you can link up

to a pan of music, usually.

As Dick says, it's the soundtrack of our lives.

Music is the soundtrack of our lives.

His restaurant and the Fudgery,

in Auburn Hills, applied for special tax breaks

because they were using welfare people

as employees.

Though Tamarla worked up to 70 hours a week

at these two jobs in the mall,

she did not earn enough to pay her rent,

and one week before the shooting

was told by her landlord

that he was evicting her.

With nowhere to go, and not wanting

to take her two children out of school,

she asked her brother

if they could stay with him for a few weeks.

It was there that Tamarlds son

found a small .32-caliber gun

and took it to school.

Tamarla did not see him

take the gun to school

because she was on a state bus to go

serve drinks and make fudge for rich people.

Bandstand

I decided to fly out to California to ask

Dick Clark what he thought about a system

that forces poor single mothers

to work two tow-wage jobs to survive.

I'm doing a... I'm doing a documentary on

these school shootings and guns and all that.

And um...

in my home town of Flint, Michigan,

which you know...

this little six-year-old shot a six-year-old.

Get in the car, Dave. Watch your arm.

- Sorry.

- I'm sorry, we're really late.

The mother of the kid who did the shooting

works at Dick Clark's All-American Grill.

Forget it. Close the door.

It's a Welfare To Work program.

- These people are forced to...

- Close the door. Goodbye.

I want you to help me to convince

the Governor of Michigan...

It's a Welfare To Work...

These women are forced to work.

They've got kids at home... Dick!

AW, jeez!

In George Bush's America,

the poor were not a priority.

And after September 112001,

correcting America's social problems

took a back seat to fear,

panic, and a new set of priorities.

One way to express our unity...

...is for Congress to set the military budget,

the defense of the United States,

as the number one priority,

and fully fund my request.

We've been selling a lot of chemical suits,

with the gloves and the hoods.

And we've been selling a lot of gas masks.

I'm trying to get one for myself and my puppy.

Dennis Marks and his wife

have stocked up supplies.

Weapons, ammunition.

Wei-Mart says after September 11,

gun sales surged 70%.

In Dallas, they're already taking pot shots

at Osama bin Laden.

In the months after the 9/11 attacks,

we Americans were gripped in a state of fear.

None of us knew if we too

would die at the hands of the evildoers,

or who may be next to a guy

trying to set fire to his shoes.

The threats seemed very real.

It's probably a little paranoia,

but I'm not gonna take the chance.

Just trying to protect myself and my family.

Our growing fears were turned into

a handsome profit for many.

Mike Blake has seen a 30%

increase in sales at ADT over the last month.

Most of the people he talks to are still a little

uneasy over the September 11 terrorist attacks.

How are we afraid of these things?

Because a lot of people are making a lot

of money off of it, and a lot of careers off of it.

And so there's vested interests,

and a lot of activity to keep us afraid.

What better way to fight

box-cutler-wielding terrorists

than to order a record number of fighter jets

from Lockheed?

Yes. Everyone felt safer,

especially with the army doing garbage detail

on Park Avenue.

And the greatest benefit of all

of a terrorized public

is that the corporate and political leaders

can get away with just about anything.

I've never seen a better example

of cash-and-carry government

than this Bush Administration... and Enron.

There were a lot of things I didn't know

after the World Trade Center attack,

but one thing was clear.

Whether it was before or after September 11,

a public that's this out of control with fear

should not have a lot of guns or ammo

laying around.

Well, I was shot with a...

YES-Q.

- 9mm?

- Yeah.

It was a...

I guess it was supposed to be semi-automatic,

but it kinda seemed like fully automatic to me,

from what I remember.

This is Richard Castaldo.

And this is Mark Taylor.

Both of these boys were shot

the day of the Columbine massacre.

Richard is paralyzed for life and in a wheelchair.

And Mark is barely standing

after numerous operations.

The kids at Columbine had to pay a penalty.

We paid a penalty that day... for this nation,

the way we look at it.

Mark and Richard were disabled and suffering

from the 17-cent Kmart bullets

still embedded in their bodies.

As they showed me the various entry points

for the bullets,

I thought of one way we could reduce

the number of guns and bullets laying around.

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